Final (historical) pre-retirement inventory of SerpenCo

I have been going through my backup NAS server deleting any old crap that I can live without, and happened across the inventory spreadsheet I worked up when I was retiring the business and trying to sell the business and inventory to someone interested in carrying on with what I was working on. Dated 02-12-2009.

The idea behind this was to itemize all of the adults and extrapolate out what the value would be over the next three breeding seasons, estimating a conservative price on each eligible female producing a clutch of only 10 babies.

Too bad the economy was in such a shambles then. I had several people very interested in the deal, but unfortunately they just could not find a bank that would spring for lending money to someone interested in starting up a snake breeding business. So I wound up selling the animals and equipment at bulk prices to a wholesaler who apparently didn't really care about the genetics, both current nor potential, of what I was selling. I believe I sent a copy of this spreadsheet to the people who expressed serious interest in buying SerpenCo, and I think only a blind man wouldn't have seen the potential I was offering.

Anyway, if you have Excel or a compatible spreadsheet app that can read the file, I think maybe you would be interested to see what I was working with at the time I closed the doors. I am just posting this for historical purposes.

That is quite fantastic and what fun projects! It's such a bummer that it all went wholesale.

-Tonya

Wow, that's quite the list! Makes me wish I had gotten started in the hobby a few years earlier so I could have gotten some of your snakes.

Wow. I knew you had a large colony. But when you look at a list it really get an understanding of what a large colony is.

Hah! I can still plainly remember the year I produced 8,000+ babies. I used to set up the incubating eggs in plastic shoe boxes and stash them where ever I could. I had boxes every conceivable place in that reptile building. I would use colored dots for status markers (a trick I learned from Bill & Kathy Love) and of course, the red dot was for when the babies began to pip in that particular clutch.

Well I remember one day standing there looking upon a mind numbing of red-dotted boxes that needed to have the babies set up to offer their first meals. You can't wait too long to do that, otherwise it seemed that they would quickly lose the will to feed. So I am standing there thinking about all of the babies that had already been set up and needed to be fed every night, and then how many more yet to go. I swear, I never knew before that day what someone meant when they mentioned the term "panic attack". I don't remember going into the back room, but I do remember leaning on the freezer back there holding my head in my hands in a cold sweat and breathing extremely rapidly with shallow breathes. I took absolutely every bit of will power I to keep from opening that back door and do running off into the woods just screaming. It was one hell of a scary feeling. And probably the very first chink in my armor letting me know that I couldn't keep on doing this for very much longer.

I still have nightmares every now and again, of finding a room that I had forgotten I had in the building, and then when I opened the door I had rows and rows of cages filled with dead and desiccated snakes that I had just forgotten about for who knows how long. That is another one that gets me breaking into cold sweats just thinking about. Honestly, I did have something like that in small scale happen to me. It was a female Honduran milk that during the beginning of hibernation season for some reason I moved her cage into a corner on the floor. Something I never did. So with the lights out for a few months, with only going in every few weeks to clean out the water bowels and put in fresh water for all of them, this one I moved not only escaped my notice, but that of everyone else working for us at the time. So come Spring time, she had long ago had her water bowl dried up, and she just died from dehydration. You would think that with the thousands of snakes I worked with, that deaths wouldn't hit me so hard. But hell, they sure did. Especially ones that I was the cause of.

Ah well, looks like I am starting a book here...... :laugh:

Another reason why I am not interested in writing a book: Proof reading is a real pain in the butt lately! I just got done writing something, so why the heck do I want to waste my time reading that all over again? oke: So often times, I don't. And just as often regret it.

Rich Z said:

I still have nightmares every now and again, of finding a room that I had forgotten I had in the building, and then when I opened the door I had rows and rows of cages filled with dead and desiccated snakes that I had just forgotten about for who knows how long. That is another one that gets me breaking into cold sweats just thinking about.

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I have that nightmare every now and then too. Usually it's something like going into the closet and realizing I have one or more snakes in enclosures in there that I completely forgot about for who knows how long. And I have this horrible feeling wash over me, like how could I forget?!

That one, and the nightmare that I've found a bunch of amazing snakes and my hands are so full and all of them are trying to escape and I have no place to put them. Lol!

hypnoctopus said:

I have that nightmare every now and then too. Usually it's something like going into the closet and realizing I have one or more snakes in enclosures in there that I completely forgot about for who knows how long. And I have this horrible feeling wash over me, like how could I forget?!

That one, and the nightmare that I've found a bunch of amazing snakes and my hands are so full and all of them are trying to escape and I have no place to put them. Lol!

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LOL!! Yeah, I have had similar dreams. Some apparently recurring enough that I recognize them the next time around. Heck, for that matter, I sometimes wonder if the less outrageous ones are actually memories and not dreams at all. Seems I have reached that age that I am not really sure any longer. Especially places where I used to hunt for Coastal Plain Milk Snakes when I lived in Maryland. One day I took a friend up to some spots I knew of in New Jersey and I wound up catching 7 or 8 gravid females. The other guy only caught one male, and a spotted turtle I picked out visually over in a bog nearby. I believe that one is a memory. But it was quite a long time ago. If I recall correctly, he didn't seem all that happy about my good luck that day.

One oddball one that I know isn't a memory and is obviously a dream is one that I am in an area with rounded rocky outcroppings with shallow caves into them. Broad sandy areas surround all the rock outcroppings. Some caves even have old abandoned furniture like rickety tables and chairs scattered around inside, looking long abandoned. I am poking around in the caves and start finding California king snakes wedged into recesses in the walls. I find so many that I start getting picky about the ones I want to pick up. Then I start finding spectacular looking Sinaloan milk snakes. Start emptying the bags of the Cal kings!! Suddenly they are everywhere.

I have had similar recurring dreams.....the nightmare of forgotten snakes in cages and other fun dreams of finding a snake hunting area near the Everglades with many aberrant looking Cornsnakes.
Usually get them once a year or so.

Rich Z said:

Another reason why I am not interested in writing a book: Proof reading is a real pain in the butt lately! I just got done writing something, so why the heck do I want to waste my time reading that all over again? oke: So often times, I don't. And just as often regret it.

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I really wish you write that book! There's only a couple of good Corn snakes books out there (i probably have 3-5 in my kindle lol). Find a good proofreader and/or editor to do it for you (Upwork, Freelancer and other freelancing sites are where to look). I'd love to but im not really confident given that im not a native english speaker...

pitzMike said:

I really wish you write that book! There's only a couple of good Corn snakes books out there (i probably have 3-5 in my kindle lol). Find a good proofreader and/or editor to do it for you (Upwork, Freelancer and other freelancing sites are where to look). I'd love to but im not really confident given that im not a native english speaker...

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Highly unlikely. These days people seem to be stuck too far up Facebook's butt to be taking the time for anything else. Heck, just look at how well this site is doing. That should be a hint. I just cannot imagine anything that would convince me that writing a book would be worth my time or effort.

On occasion as seems appropriate, I will likely post some experiences that seem relevant and possibly even interesting to others. That will have to do.